Updates

So I turned into a bit of a slug this winter. Between wedding planning and marathon training, Lily took a backseat. The dreaded Winterreifenpflicht (winter tire requirements) in Germany kept Lily in the Garage from October until mid-April so progress was minimal. I knew that there were brake issues somewhere along the way, so when spring thaw came to Bavaria (early March), it was time to get back to work. Actually, it was my neighbor's enthusiasm for bleeding the brakes that got me going. Unfortunately we didn't get very far on our first attempt. The brake pedal was on the floor in no time. I immediately thought that it was the master cylinder because my dad had warned me that it would probably go out sooner rather than later in a car that had been sitting for so long. I was right, so our plans were put on hold once more while I ordered the required parts. The parts arrived just before I left to go to Bonaire with Jon for his mid-tour leave, so they sat in their box in the garage for another few weeks. Finally, we got around to installing the new cylinder. We took it to a self-help garage here because the thought of changing a brake cylinder without lifting the car seemed too awkward to contemplate. It took us a few hours because Horst didn't want to take the gas tank out, but eventually we exchanged the faulty part for a shiny new one and my car was able to stop again. Since the weather has been really great these last few days, I decided to take Lily to work last Friday. She decided otherwise. Halfway to the town where I work, she stopped moving forward. The gas pedal was useless and even the farmers in their tractors were passing me. I pulled over, looked at the engine (more of a pleading stare than an actual attempt to find a problem...), cranked it again and went on my way...for about 100 yards. The car did the same thing again, so I pulled over and looked for a tow truck. The problem with having an old, not-so-reliable car in a rural area is that it can be hard to get help when you need it. I used the first towing company that I could find. Since they happened to be attached to a garage, I asked if they could look the car over and give me an estimate for repair costs. The response: new spark plugs, new condensor, new fuel pump, new...well, pretty much everything but a new kitchen sink! Good thing it wasn't my old van that they towed in because I'm sure they would have tried to charge me for a new sink too. The estimate: 300 Euros. Since I put new spark plugs in when I got the car and the list they provided me was pretty extensive, I checked with the guys at the self-help garage. They agreed: these guys were full of shit. (Local readers: KfZ Krause was the name of the shop. Avoid these slimeballs at all cost, especially if you're American and female.) So I called to see how much they would charge to just bring the car to my house. Also 300 Euros. I went to get the car the next day. My insurance covered the initial towing and I'd found someone to bring Lily home for the much more reasonable cost of 50 Euros. When I got there, not only did this joker not have the paperwork filled out for my car, but he told me that there was no need for towing anyways. The inspection had cleared the fuel pathway enough so that I could drive the car home. With my co-pilot, the lovely Madison, I drove back to Illesheim. Lily seemed to have developed the same feature that newer VWs have, where they turn the engine off at traffic lights to save gas. It isn't easy being green. Or old and blue, like Lily. We had to pull off and wait for the engine to work again a few times, but we made it home in good time. Faster, actually, than Madison's husband who was supposed to be following us in their new car. (Sorry Andrew, had to say it!) Today I brought Lily back to the self-help garage to see what I could do. The guys there are super helpful. They showed me how to set the points and helped me check out the fuel system to see what the problem is. We took apart the fuel pump and found out that that was the problem (or one of the problems.) It's getting late now, and there's so much more to tell, but that'll have to wait for another day!

My Neighbor is the Best Neighbor in the World!

So, for those of you who don't know, my other hobby is triathlon. Monday is the day when the pool here opens earlier so I got up and went for a nice swim yesterday. While I was in town, I stopped at the parts shop to get the bolts that I thought I needed and some sandpaper so I can start attacking Lily's "problem areas". I'd taken Jon's jeep because Lily's registration has expired and when I got home, I found my downstairs neighbor, the one who helped me on Friday, in the garage putting all of the engine tin back in place! He had gotten the shorter bolts to work after all.

Next, he asks if I have time to work on the windshield wipers. Not bein particularly...um...employed at the moment, I said sure. At this point I should say that my neighbors share a two-car garage with us and that Horst is a very recently retired mechanic. Thus, it is perfectly normal for him to be in my garage and I'm sure that he is much better at repairing stuff. I try to help, but when I can't help, I watch and learn!

So we starter on the wiper problem. The first problem is that the springs which hold the magnets at the top of the motor in place are pretty worn out. We decide to replace them so I drive to the VW dealer in Bad Windsheim because the do occasionally have really old parts in stock. No such luck this time, but the guy at the desk takes out his pen and pulls the spring out of it. He points out that these two springs are very similar. I love German ingenuity!

Back home, we find three suitable springs and reassemble the motor. Jon calls so I go upstairs and half an hour later I come back to find everything almost reinstalled. The es for the wipers are sticking, but they seem to be turning some and so far the fuse hasn't exploded yet!

On a side note, the desktop PC I was using to write has stopped working . I'm waiting for the system disk to arrive so I can make it work again. Until then, I probably won't post many pictures and spelling, punctuation, and formatting will probably all suffer.

Sorry I've Been Away for so Long, but I Haven't Abandoned Lily

It's been a hectic couple of weeks and I haven't taken as much time to work on my Beetle as I probably should have. There are several reason for this. In early July, I was back home in America and unfortunately Lily is too heavy to take as checked luggage. When we got back, Jon only had two weeks to go until he left and there were other things that we wanted to do. We did take Lily on a nice drive to Rothenburg ob der Tauer on Jon's last day here. It was a lovely day and Lily did fine. The shaking that she seemed to be suffering from was less noticeable than it had been. We're attributing this to the fresh gas we put in the car finally making its way through the system, the new spark plugs, and the oil change. Once we were back I did have the presence of mind to order replacement parts that I knew I would need when I got back to work. I ordered a new muffler and tailpipes (can't have one without the other!), front tie rod ends, and something else which I have forgotten about. This will be a delightful surprise when it gets in, whatever it was.

I have spent a bit of time working on the windshield wiper motor problem, but haven't really gotten anywhere. I still think that the rust that had accumulated in the bottom of the motor may have caused a short. I scrubbed it out with a wire brush but haven't gotten around to reassembling it. I put the fresh air box back together, but it can't be reinstalled until the windshield wiper problem has been fixed. I'm looking forward to driving with a ventilation system again, but without 40 year old flecks of pollen being blown in my face.

The big project this week has been installing the new muffler and tailpipes. The old one was extremely rusty and noisy. The new muffler arrived early last week and last weekend I decided to get back to work!

Made in Germany, shipped to America, and sold back to Germany. Ah, the APO system!

I was working on the Beetle alone, but my screwdriver was insufficient so I asked my downstairs neighbor, Horst, if I could borrow some tools. He came out and asked what I was trying to do and promptly sat down to help! Now, that's what I call a great neighbor! I've read in VW forums about people having problems with neighbors who complain about noisy VWs, but never one who insists on doing so much of the work! I tried to help as much as I could, but Horst is clearly the more skilled mechanic (this was his profession before he retired) so I also took the opportunity to watch and learn. We had the muffler off in an hour, but I'd forgotten to order gaskets so I had to wait until this week to order them. Since I live in Bavaria and this was Saturday night, I couldn't do anything until Monday. The gaskets were ordered on Monday and arrived on Wednesday, but I didn't collect them until today.

Once I got the gaskets, and after a lovely conversation on the phone with Jon, I went downstairs to start working. I wasn't at the Beetle for more than ten minutes (usefully spent preparing everything for re-installation), when Horst came out and asked if I wanted help. Who am I to say no? We worked together to attach the new muffler and he really helped me out with the seals for the tail pipes and some annoying clamps that I was having trouble with.

Horst and the mystery piece...we just put it back where it came from, whatever it does


We got the new muffler attached, but one of the old screws on the clamps had broken so we didn't quite finish. We still have to reassemble all of the tin that surrounds the engine and attach that last clamp.

Another nice thing that Horst did was to attack the dent in the front fender for me with a hammer. I was thinking that I might just end up replacing the part, but within a few minutes, the old part looked much better and with a bit of Bondo, some sanding, and a fresh coat of primer, it'll be ready to paint!

It's Been a While, but Progress is Being Made

I haven't gotten around to updating my blog since Monday, but that doesn't mean that I have been neglecting Lily! Over the course of this week a lot of things have gotten done. The windshield wiper motor finally came out, with Jon's help. The radio, if anyone is interested, was held in place by two little washers that had to be turned very gently with a tiny screw driver. The washers were actually integrated into the stereo knobs, hence being virtually invisible. Once we got the washers out, the faceplate came off the radio. Then there were two rather inflexible metal strips in front of the radio. They were holding the radio back, preventing it from falling forwards. In other models, there are little hinged clips in the back so I had spent a while trying to bend these things. It was not going to happen! Once those were out of the way and all of the wiring for the radio had been disconnected, the radio was easily removed by pushing it towards the passenger compartment. If anyone wants to market a theft proof radio, I think I've found the perfect prototype. It took me at least an hour's work to get the thing out! I don't think your average car radio thief would have the patience for this thing. (Do people still actually steal car radios these days? My last car was so run down that the thieves would have felt sorry for me so I didn't have to worry about that!)

Once the radio came out, we were easily able to get the windshield wiper motor out and take it apart. Everything looks ok, but there's some pretty heavy rust build up. I have to figure out how to test the motor and I'm going to scrub all of that rust out of there before I put it back together. If the motor isn't faulty, then it must be a wiring problem. Still, I wanted to take things apart and look at them before putting them back together so I don't really mind that I may have taken the extremely long way around.

While Jon was humming and hawing in the front of the car (the so-called luggage compartment as my newly arrived Haynes manual calls it, thus avoiding the nomenclature issues that can arise when trying to describe the thing that is like the trunk in the front of the car), I went around to the back. I decided to wash out the oil sieve instead of buying a new one, but I'm still waiting for new gaskets before I put the oil in. Gaskets, as I learned this week, are called Dichtungen in German. My Dichtungen should be at the VW mechanic in the next town tomorrow. After that, I'll close things up and put in some fresh oil. All of the Germans seem to like 15W/40 and since it's a German car, I've decided to go native. Another word that I learned this week is Zundkerzen. They are not Zundsteckdosen, like you would say if you translated "spark plug" directly into German. Germans think of them as more like candles. I'm not sure why.

I'd been wanting to look at the spark plugs since I got the car because my dad always said that you could tell a lot about the state of a VW engine by looking at the spark plugs. Fortunately, they were not gunky at all. That indicates that there isn't oil leaking into places where it shouldn't be. Of course, it could be leaking into other places, but for now I'm feeling good about the state of things. The did have a bit of corrosion on them, but I think that's probably because the car was stationery for so long. Regardless of their pristine beauty, there's a strong chance that they're older than I am and the extra set that Kurt had left in the tool kit didn't look too much better, so I bought new ones. Those are going in tomorrow too.

I'm still not sure how to go forth with the project. On one hand, the engine runs and doesn't seem to leak oil anywhere. At all. Which is weird for a VW...good weird. Lily does not mark her spot at all. This makes me hesitant to start pulling things apart and replacing seals because I'm not sure I could come up with anything better than what is already there. Somehow I trust the mechanical skills of the VW factory workers who put the engine together more than I trust my own. On the other hand, the car is 40 years old and I'm pretty sure that no major work has been done. The hot and cool air ducts in the engine still had overspray on them and the car only had just over 40k km on it when I bought it so it seems unlikely that much has been done and it seems very possible that nothing major needs to be done. I don't want to do a half-assed job, but I don't want to dig myself into a pit and end up with a car that doesn't run as well as it should just because I'm eager to get my hands greasy. What should I do?

Well, for tomorrow at least, I'm going to put the oil gaskets and sieve back in place, fill her up with oil, put in some new spark plugs and drive her all the way across the road. This is to free up the garage for the crazy Bavarian things that my neighbors want to do to celebrate last weekend's engagement. Wish me luck! :)

Tearing stuff apart

Today I had help working on the Beetle. Jon and I had decided to take apart the dash to see if that was the way to get to the fresh air box and the windshield wiper motor. It wasn't, but we figured that much out pretty quickly. I was stumped about how to get the stupid fresh air box out of the way, but eventually he found three little screws in the groove near the trunk seal and once we took them out, the fresh air box was free! I took it apart and cleaned all of the crap out of it. It was disgusting. There seems to be some sort of mold in there so it's going to have to sit out in the sun for a while. That's ok though, because the windshield wiper motor still isn't out!!

Still a mess in here...


We spent a while trying to get the original radio out of the way so that we could get to the final nuts holding the windshield wiper motor in place, but it wasn't budging and I was afraid to use too much force because I don't want to destroy the dash, the radio, or my hand, so I ended up leaving it there. The wiring looks ok for the most part - nothing seems obviously corroded, although there is one connector on the wiring for the motor that seems suspicious. I may try to install a new connector tomorrow and see if that fixes the problem. Otherwise, I'll try to find out how to get the radio out of there and then keep working on getting the motor out.

Jon also took the old license plate holder off of the back of the car. Underneath it and the grime that had accumulated underneath it was a small patch of pristine paint. It's nice to see what the car looked like when it was new and to have some more guidance on restoring it to its original color.

Today was Sunday and in Bavaria, that means no shopping. Not even for Beetle parts. Tomorrow I'm going to buy some more viscous oil (Germans seem to like 15W-40), wire strippers, and a new oil screen if they've got the right one for my bug. I'm going to try again to get the radio out and see if I can make some more progress on getting the windshield wiper motor out. I'm slowly finding my way around the confusing mess of wires in the front end of the car...of course, by the time I feel at home there it'll be time to move on to something else.

Morning Projects

The to-do list for today was more than enough, considering how long it's been since I worked on a VW. Here's a run-down of how the projects went:

1) Oil change. Status: 50% completion, waiting on parts.
Talk about a tough nut!


I had ratchets and wrenches, but this one did not want to budge. Since my oil pan was questionable too, I decided to run down to the shop to get some WD-40. I read somewhere that oil + heat + ultraviolence a few gentle taps = job done. I ran the engine for a while when I got back to heat up everything (but not for long enough to make the exhaust pipes flesh-searing hot), sprayed a bunch of oil onto the offending nut and viola! Three year-old oil tar comes gushing out of my car. I think there may have actually been whole chunks of dinosaur in this oil. An hour later, it was still dribbling out because the oil was so thick. Unfortunately, I was overly optimistic and thought that I could reuse the oil screen. While it might technically be possible, it seems much smarter to get a new one.

2) Spark plugs.
I didn't even bother to get started with this one. I could take them out, clean them, and check the gaps without having to run the engine. However, since project 3 took so long and I won't be able to get my new oil screen until Monday at the absolute earliest, I left this one for tomorrow. Or the next day. Or whenever I find out what's going on with the windshield wipers.

3)Windshield wipers.
Wiring diagrams are useful and they certainly made more sense when I could actually see the wires that they were describing! However, they did not help me very much today. I started looking for the windshield wiper motor. It's located behind the part which is euphemistically called the fresh air box. In my car it's more like the leftover dust from the Nuremberg trials box. This is the thing that was blowing crap in my face the other day when I took the car for a spin after sweeping it out. I have to take it out, and not just because I hate it for making me sneeze. It also obscures my view of the windshield wiper motor and all of the pretty wiring that connects to it.


A preview of what might be hiding behind Pandora's fresh air box...

Unfortunately, I couldn't get it out from the front side of the car and it looks like I'm going to have to remove at least part of the dashboard to get anywhere with this. I got as far as I could, but I need more information and probably a second set of hands so I'm going to wait until tomorrow.

Even though it wasn't a success, I figured something out and that really is the point of the project. If I wanted this to be done quickly, I'd just drop the car off at the VW restoration shop in Nuremberg. That would be very boring though and would not make for a good blog.

How to Impress that VW-loving Girl in Your Life

Jon knows about my blog (or blug and I obnoxiously called it the other day). When he got home from work last night, I was tired, but he insisted I go down to the Beetle and post pictures of the cars new tires. But Jon, I argued, everyone knows what tires look like! Still, I was happy that he was interested in both of my projects so I went along with it. So, folks, here it is...a new tire.


I think it's beautiful, but I tend to dote. Also, it was nice to drive the car yesterday without thinking that 75% of my tires had a strong chance of experiencing spontaneous failure in the immediate future.

Of course, I didn't just buy new tires yesterday. He also wanted me to take a picture of the burnt fuse cover.



Yup, it's burnt alright. I tried to install the new fuses, but the one for the windshield wipers threw sparks and burned my thumb as soon as the fuse made contact with the panel. My next guess is that a little rodent had a tasty snack of wire coating while the vehicle was left standing. I wish those books would hurry up and get here! I found a wiring diagram for my Beetle:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

German 1971 Beetle Wiring Diagram

For German-speakers and people who need a key (i.e. those of us who for whom wiring diagrams mostly look like abstract art), go here:
German language version with key

So I'll look around today and see if I can find any obvious problems in the wiring for the windshield wipers. That, plus the oil change, replacing the spark plugs, and checking the timing should be enough VW for me for today.

Then, Jon said "Oh, and don't forget to take a picture of this one" and started moving towards the glove box. I thought he wanted me to photograph the trunk lever. Then I looked inside...



Who knew that my Beetle is almost the same color as a Tiffany's box?! Of course, it's not the box that matters...



Of course I said yes. It was the sweetest thing ever. :-D

So now I have another reason to get my beetle finished up in the next year. It has a wedding to go to!

Of course, getting engaged didn't change my oil, nor did it fix my windshield wipers, so it's time for me to get to work!